Among the Greeks and Romans, the symposium or convivium was the practice that followed the banquet, during which diners drank, sang songs and dedicated themselves to entertainment of various kinds, with philosophical conversations, plays or leisure activities. The symposium was dedicated to adult m...

Oceanus, son of Uranus and Gaea, was a Titan and for the ancient Greeks the god of water, distinguished from Poseidon, Neptune for the Romans, who was one of the twelve gods of Olympus. A solemn worship of Oceanus was established in ancient Greece and the custom spread of making offerings and sacrif...

In Greek mythology, the thiasus was originally the procession of Dionysus, composed of the maenads, or half human and half animal figures like the sileni and satyrs. The marine thiasos, on the other hand, refers to a composition of mythological figures, linked to the sea, that surrounded Poseidon. ...

The myth of Arion of Methymna is narrated by some sources including the Histories of Herodotus. The young composer was the first to write dithyrambs, original forms of tragedy, and was not inferior to anyone in his time. After a long stay with Periander of Corinth, his desire was to reach Italy and ...

Lycurgus is remembered in various stories and versions, but in all of them he represents the mythical figure of a sovereign, in perennial conflict with the god Dionysus. Homer describes the episode in which Lycurgus drove the bacchae and satyrs out of his kingdom, together with the god himself. Oth...

The maenads were the three daughters of Minyas, King of Orchomenus, a city near Thebes. According to the mythological story, the young women were not interested in worshipping Dionysus, who, irritated, drove the sisters to madness. The story ends with the intervention of Hermes, the Roman Mercury, w...

Originally the ancient tales refer to the sileni as mythological figures who, together with the fauns, satyrs and nymphs, populated the woods. In this context, the sileni are considered spirits of water and springs. Their representation was very widespread in iconographies, both in wall paintings an...

The deity Pan did not live in Olympus among the other gods because he was the god of forests and nature in general. He could be found in the woods, where he accompanied other satyrs and protected the rivers. His appearance was coarse, depicted covered in hair, with goat legs and sometimes horns. He ...

In Greek mythology, Eros represents the god of physical love and the divine principle that drives men towards beauty and harmony. According to tradition, Eros is the son of Aphrodite and Ares, known as Venus and Mars to the Romans, who indicate Eros as Cupid, generally depicted as a winged child wi...

The sources of the mythological motif of the fight between Eros and Pan are essentially iconographic: in fact, the fight between the two gods recurs in artefacts from the Greek-Roman period in which the representation is divided into different groups of actors: as a gymnasium exercise in which, in a...